In his speech advocating EU membership, Corbyn sad: "The European Convention on Human Rights, empowering citizens to hold the Government accountable has strengthened our rights as citizens and stopped the Government gagging free speech and a free press."

Shadow cabinet minsiter Lord Falconer told The Huffington Post: "It was a good speech, marred by the appalling hissing of the media."

He added: "We should be doing nothing that's detrimental to the media doing their job".

Journalists are people doing their job. A party that stands up for workers' rights should not allow them to be booed and hissed at. End of.

Corbyn also took aim at the “baseless and narrow” views of political columnists. "The one thing I have learnt over the past six-months or so is how shallow, facile and ill-informed many of the supposed well-informed major commentators are in our media," he said.

Other journalists jumped to Kuenssberg's defence.

So @bbclaurak is invited to ask a question. The audience decide to boo and hiss before she has even asked one. Disgraceful behaviour

The petition was removed by its creator in May after Kuenssberg was subject to "sexist bullying", with David Cameron among those condemning an online "witch hunt" against her.

"Some of the things people say on Twitter, knowing that they are in some way anonymous, are frankly appalling and people should be ashamed of the sort of sexist bullying that often takes place," he said.